Friday, January 17, 2014

Musings on the Spiritual Life

So I continue the journey and I am fascinated by the common threads that have run through all my listening and reading so far - whether it is an Episcopal priest, a Buddhist monk, an Indian doctor or a scholar of miracles...

They are:

To be still and allow God to talk to you. The busier you are the more you need the stillness.

To pray to be in contact with God, to reach new levels of awareness to learn who you are beside a physical body (through meditation and prayer).

To live in the present moment. We do not have the past - it is gone. We do not have the future either. All we really have is now.

Reading from "Liquid Rubies"

About Me

I am a special education teacher, poet, novelist, first soprano, occasional painter and guitar player living in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. My two adult children continue to bring joy and laughter to my life, and now I am a grandmother as well! I am blessed with a smart, generous, loving husband and a constant canine companion, Stella. I love God. Talking to Him saves me from myself everyday. I also maintain a blog called COEXIST because I believe He loves us all and simply expects us to love each other while we're here on Earth.

I'll be loving you always, Dad.

If God gives you something to do, why in the world wouldn't you do it?Stephen King

Proud to be an American today

There is hope everywhere. Today God gives the milk and I have the pail. Anne Sexton

Think About It

"Coexistence - or no existence."Piet Hein, poet and scientist 1905-1996

I live my life in widening circlesthat reach out across the world.I may not complete this last onebut I give it to myself.I circle around God,around the primordial tower.I've been circling for thousands of years and I stilldon't know: am I falcon,a storm, or a great song?Rainer Maria Rilke

Check out this wonderful movement. It's about time.

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you too can become great." Mark Twain

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong. Mohandas Gandhi

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.Anais Nin

Life isn't about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself. George Bernard Shaw

What good will it be if a woman gains the whole world, and loses her soul? Matthew 16:26

Seek your passion - then do it.

Poetry is, above all, a singing art of natural and magical connection because, though it is born out of one person's solitude, it has the ability to reach out and touch in a humane and warmly illuminating way the solitude, even the loneliness, of others. That is why, to me, poetry is one of the most vital treasures that humanity possesses; it is a bridge between separated souls."Brendan Kennelly

An artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and he does it without destroying something else.John Updike (1932-2009)

I believe that all creative expression springs simply from the desire to be known.

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice. Abraham Lincoln

We write to taste life twice; in the moment and in retrospection. Anais Nin

Marilyn

I painted this vulnerable pose just because I thought it was beautiful.

When morning gilds the skies...

November sunrise in my back yard.

Want to know more about Cleveland? I know you do!

Click on this photo

It's a sad waste of energy to defend oneself in the shadow of the mercy seat - forgiveness being part of the unfathomable mystery of God. Amy Grant

Artwork by B. Matthews Platt

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."Pablo Picasso

Have some!

This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed non-conformists. The saving of our world from pending doom will not come from the actions of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a dedicated minority.Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

My church - September 2008

Come, Listen, Love

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. E.B. White

Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition. Eli Khamarov

Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of humor or insider pathos or meaning. All of us can sing the same song, and there will still be four billion different renditions.

Cleveland skyline

This was the view from our restaurant as we celebrated our anniversary.

Central Park - NYC June 2008

"I know that I can write, a couple of my stories are good, my descriptions of the Secret Annex are humorous, there's a lot in my diary that speaks, but - whether I have any real talent remains to be seen." Anne Frank April 5, 1944

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.

Flying Over Midnight

by Diane

God Bless America

Now blooming. . .

We are fortunate to have an acre of land. But the first spring we lived here this was the ONLY thing blooming in the yard!

Bouncers

I don't remember getting to do stuff like this in elementary school for being "good".

A view of our neighbor's yard from our deck. Thank you !

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest fight any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.e.e.cummings

The west bank of the Cuyahoga River

Skywatch Friday

Sunrise over the Western Hemisphere

Coexisting - even animals can do it!

Poetry would be dull indeed if we limited ourselves to the things we think we already comprehend. Robert Frost

Everyone who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. Gertrude Stein

When you are talking about art, you are talking about God indirectly; all experience of art is an indirect experience of God. Sister Wendy Beckett

Easter Saturday in Ohio- we will still sing Hallelujah!

It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. Vincent Van Gogh

Ernest Hemingway's writing place

While in Key West for a day I got a big thrill by visiting the home of Ernest Hemingway and seeing where he wrote his novels at this little table above a garage. How cool is that? My husband said "eh" and shrugged his shoulders. I thought it was extremely cool. No word processor.

INSANITY - doing the same thing over and over each time expecting a different reality.

If you are a dreamer, come in,If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer. . .If you're a pretender, come sit by my firefor we have some flax-golden tales to spin.Come in!Come in!Shel Silverstein

Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be. Fanny Brice

Picnic tables in hibernation

These are a few of my favorite things.

My Stella in the snow

M & M's

Last summer the first place we visited in New York was the M&M's store!! Three floors of heaven right in Times Square! This is just a sampling of the colors you can get!

I Love New York

Winter in Ohio

Mozart's birthplace in Salzburg

Wolfie and Me

Second Thoughts by - Bruce Holwerda

www.bruceholwerda.com

A view of my neighbor's lovely yard

And the neighbors are lovely too.

Sunny

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song - Maya Angelou. I think the caged bird sings because it still has wings.

Adorable neighbor children

I promised myself I would not put cutesy pictures on my blog - but this one's too good. It reminds me of summer too. (For those who think my love of snow is weird.)

Bridge to a Millennium

This is my only published piece of art and one of the very few completely original ideas I've ever come up with. It was for the cover of a CD.

Stella

Where's my bone?

A Red-Tailed Hawk

12-17-07

My Mother's Art 10-03-07

A painting by my mother, Martha Vogel, of my children and me.

Born to the Purple 9-23-07

This is not me. It's a painting by my uncle, Glen Heberling. It's a purple person.It reminds me that it's OK to be purple.It is entitled "Born to the Purple".